Songoftheday 6/29/22 - When the Remi's in the system ain't no tellin', will I f**k 'em will I diss 'em that's what they be yellin'...

 

 

"I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)" - Jay-Z

from the album The Dynasty: Roc La Familia (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 19

 

Today's song comes from rapper Jay-Z, who had scored a pair of top-40 crossover hits on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart from his #1 album Vol. 3...The Life & Times of S. Carter with "Jigga My N***a" and "Big Pimpin'".  But his biggest exposure in 1999 came when he guested on Mariah Carey's single "Heartbreaker", which topped the pop chart in America in the fall of that year. Jay-Z also contributed a track to the movie The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, "Hey Papi" with Amil and Memphis Bleek, which made the Billboard R&B top-40 at #16 while getting to #76 on the Hot 100. 

Jay-Z's next project the following year was originally going to be a collection of tracks from his label Roc-A-Fella, but instead morphed into his own fifth album The Dynasty: Roc La Familia. And the record does hype up a pair of newbies, with Beanie Sigel and/or Memphis Bleek featured on ten of the set's 15 main tracks. But Jay-Z is the star of the show here, and the lead single from the record is solely under his name. "I Just Wanna Love U" pairs the rapper up with up and coming production team the Neptunes, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, with Pharrell singing throughout the record. Cribbing a piece of Rick James' disco classic "Give It To Me Baby" but making it unintelligible from the original, "I Just Wanna Love U" is a slick boast of opulence supposedly surrounding the self-proclaimed pimp's life. Pre-Bey, he throws out brand porn by the shovelful, promising the ladies a piece of his pie. But it's all rote, with the Neptunes production (and Pharrell) that is the interesting thing about this record. The music video brings the bling with Jay-Z trying to get some alone time in a rowdy party at his house...

"I Just Wanna Love U" came one notch from making the top ten on Billboard's pop Hot 100 chart in December of 2000. The song landed the Jay-Z his first #1 on the R&B chart, where it stayed for three weeks. The track also climbed to #4 on the Rap Songs chart, and made it to #5 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic radio format list. Internationally, the single peaked at #17 in the United Kingdom, and reached the top-40 in Norway (#15) and New Zealand (#31). Dynasty: Roc La Familia, released in October of that year, was his third consecutive #1 album on both the Billboard 200 and the R&B Albums sales tallies, going on to sell over two million copies. 

The second single from Dynasty to hit the chart was "Guilty Until Proven Innocent", which at the time unironically featured singer R. Kelly. Mind you, this was at the time that Jay-Z was the "bad boy", having stabbed a producer in 1999 which would end up putting him on probation. The track went to #29 on the R&B chart and hit #82 on the pop Hot 100. That was followed by "Change The Game" featuring Memphis Bleek and Beanie Sigel, which also hit #29 on the R&B chart, while stopping at #86 on the pop Hot 100. That song was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2002 for Best Rap Duo/Group Performance, losing out to Outkast's classic "Ms. Jackson". Jay-Z will be back to the series, along with a newcomer producer of one of the album tracks on Dynasty, Kanye West.

(4/10)

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Here's Jay-Z performing the track on an awards show (I think the American Music Awards but could be wrong)...

Next up, Jay-Z and Pharrell in concert...

and lastly, the pair stripping the track down for Jay-Z's MTV Unplugged episode that turned into a top-20 album in 2002...

 

 

Up tomorrow: Canadian toaster denies everything.